Contrary to well loved belief, effective time management is not based on doing more things in less time. That’s just not going to happen. Time management is about doing the right things better. That’s why first and most vital skill you need to gather is to accurately identify tasks that require your full and perfect attention from small tasks that can wait. Before plotting your daily routine and choosing what needs to be done on that particular day, question yourself two questions:

Question #1: Is it what I need to be doing now?

Question #2: Do I want to do it?

After that all is simple. If your answer is “No” to both questions, you are just manslaughter your time. Stop doing it right now! People, who practised “want/need” questions, were amazed by how regularly they caught themselves doing things that they couldn’t justify doing on any grounds. For example, if you spend 30 minutes mowing your lawn but can’t stand doing it, STOP!

Find someone who will do it for you and concentrate instead on the more vital tasks. Your time is money. It is even more precious, because if you don’t have enough money, you can borrow some, but you can’t say, “Hey, I’m forty years ancient and I want to get some extra time, because I’ve just now realized, what I want to do with my life”. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.That is why Time Management is vital.

Stop looking for it. You ARE living it. You choose every day to live it in certain ways, not the others. From the time management perspective, your life is a sequence of huge and small choices and decisions. It is those choices that you really manage, not the flow of time. That’s why building your choice consciously is the key element in time management. You will notice straight away that these simple “need/want” questions will make a tremendous difference in the way you live.

Note, that even though the first question is more vital than the last one, you should not cut the things that are neither vital nor urgent but simply fun. I, for example, take pleasure in reading mystery novels. At first I tried to justify them by telling for myself that I’m expanding my vocabulary or releasing stress, but in the back of my mind I still felt guilty. I don’t anymore, because I stopped lying to for myself. I’m reading my mystery novels just because they are fun for me. That’s enough. But if I have something vital I need to get done, I can postpone reading for the next day.

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